Transportation cost changes with statewide school district consolidation

This article studies the relationship between school district size and bus transportation costs, and estimates the change in such costs when a statewide policy of consolidation is pursued. To explore this relationship, we develop a multiple-objective model and solution procedure that combines a geographic aggregation and bus routing heuristic to generate consolidation scenarios. The heuristic was developed to explicitly consider efficiency, effectiveness, and equity objectives, and can be applied in both urban and rural states. The scenarios will generate average statewide bus transportation costs. As applied to the State of Iowa, within the legislature's proposed range of consolidation of 500-1000 students, it was found that transportation operational and capital cost increases range from 0.6 to 10.6 percent and 0.7 to 7.7 percent, respectively.     

Relational selling strategy and key account managers' relational behaviors: An exploratory study

Many companies see key account management as a potentially successful way to implement a relational strategy. Nevertheless, the literature suggests that strategy implementation at the sales force level is difficult to achieve, mainly because salespeople may not understand - nor accept - what they are requested to do. Despite their relevance, behaviors of key account managers have poorly been investigated. This article defines and tests a model of relational selling behaviors from the part of key account managers. Results show that the perception of the adoption of a relational selling strategy is associated with some specific key account managers' behaviors (customer-oriented selling, adaptive selling and team selling), but not with others (organizational citizenship behaviors). These findings suggest that potential discrepancies can exist between a relational selling strategy and its implementation at the key account manager level. Based on these results, theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance: The role of knowledge creation process

This study examines the relationships among entrepreneurial orientation, knowledge creation process, and firm performance using survey data from 165 entrepreneurs. We use LISREL analysis to test the direct and indirect effects of the entrepreneurial orientation on firm performance. Knowledge creation process - operationalized to reflect the dimensions of socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization - is used as the mediating variable for explaining the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance. The results indicate that the significance of the direct effect of entrepreneurial orientation on firm performance is reduced when the indirect effect of entrepreneurial orientation through knowledge creation process is included in a total effect model. Consequently, entrepreneurial orientation is positively related to firm performance, and knowledge creation process plays a mediating role in this relationship.     

Actors, resources, activities and commitments

A new concept, commitments, is introduced and defined as “agreements between two or more social actors to carry out future actions” and its incorporation into, and articulation of, the actors-resources-activities model described. Commitments are distinguished from the concept of commitment as traditionally used in inter-organisational relationships. The latter is mainly an affective measure at the level of an individual concerning the general relationship between buying and selling organisations. By contrast commitments are agreements made between actors and range from the specific and everyday to the general and strategic.The theoretical background and nature of commitments are described and how commitments relate to and enrich each of the elements of the ARA model demonstrated. The application of the concept to B2B relationships at the level of individual, group, organisational and net actors is set out and implications of the use of the commitments concept for researchers and managers are suggested.     

Mobile technology usage and B2B market performance under mandatory adoption

This paper investigates the relationship between mandatory adoption of mobile information technology and market performance in the business-to-business (B2B) setting. This study presents and tests the B2B technology satisfaction model (TSM), including perceived loss of control as the mandatory technology acceptance-specific variable. The results of this study reveal that integrating perceived loss of control with user satisfaction and the TAM (technology acceptance model) in a single model can better explain the B2B market performance model. The empirical results suggest that perceived loss of control has a negative effect on user satisfaction and perceived market performance is influenced by user satisfaction and perceived usefulness. Managerial implications of the study are discussed.     

The impact of market freedom on the adoption of third-party electronic marketplaces: A fuzzy AHP analysis

Electronic-marketplace (EM) is an innovative model for interfirm transactions that are undertaken via the Internet. However, in view of higher investment costs and other associated risks, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), instead of establishing their own EMs, turn to adopt third-party-hosted EMs. In literature, most relevant studies to the adoption of the third-party-hosted EM were conducted on the research contexts of free market. Industries under the protection of government policies may have limited degree of market freedom, different from industries without these protection policies. Thus, this study intends to compare the decision choice of EM adoption between industries with various degree of market freedom. The decision choice of EM adoption consisted of many strategic factors that were constructed in terms of a three-layer hierarchical structure proposed in this paper. A fuzzy analytic hierarchical process (Fuzzy AHP) was utilized to estimate the relative importance of these individual strategic factors involved in the decision-making process of adopting third-party EMs. The research findings indicated there were some similarities and differences in the decision choice between the two industries of interest. The variety of market freedom can account for the differences in the decision choice of EM adoption. In addition to enhancing our understanding of the EM adoption decision of participative companies, the research findings also provide insightful information to third-party EM providers so that they may improve the effectiveness and efficiency of resource allocation.     

Japanese distribution system: The impact of newly designed collaborations on wholesalers' performance

In January 1995, the Kobe earthquake devastated a major part of Kobe's distribution infrastructure. Apart from the expected complaints about lost sales, wholesalers reported some surprising comments after the reopening. Wholesalers stressed the advantages of newly designed distribution channels, especially the opportunity to end longstanding business relationships known as keiretsu. This study is concerned with the recent development of vertical collaboration in the Japanese distribution channel. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the supplier's service to wholesaler, the supplier's offerings to the wholesaler, and buyer's service to the wholesaler did contribute to the enhancement of the performance of the wholesaler. The three factors explained 16% of the wholesaler's performance. The regression analysis also showed that the wholesaler's intra-logistics activities contributed to the improvement of the performance of the wholesaler and explained 5% of its performance.     

The asymmetric moderating role of market orientation on the ambidexterity-firm performance relationship for prospectors and defenders

Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm and, in particular, the capabilities perspective of firm performance, the authors examine the relationship between ambidexterity and firm performance for two strategy typologies: prospectors and defenders. Ambidexterity, defined as the combination of two discrete capabilities (exploration and exploitation), should have a less negative effect on firm performance among prospectors that add exploitation to exploration than among defenders who add exploration to exploitation. Hence, this research predicts an asymmetric effect of ambidexterity on firm performance for prospectors and defenders. The authors further posit that a boundary-spanning culture, such as market orientation, can function as a metaculture by integrating the subunit cultures generated by exploration and exploitation. As a result, market orientation should mitigate the negative effect of ambidexterity on firm performance, albeit differently for prospectors and defenders, and thus point to an asymmetric moderating role of market orientation. The findings provide mixed results, which the authors discuss along with some theoretical and managerial implications.     

Oppression, emancipation, and volunteer tourism: Research Propositions

This paper develops research propositions for volunteer tourism using a combination of critical theory and social movement theory as a foundation. As is often the case with emerging areas of research, a theoretical foundation has been difficult to establish in volunteer tourism. The inherent contradictions of volunteer tourism, particularly concerning the interplay of oppression/emancipation, dependency/resistance and dominant hegemony/agency beg to be deconstructed with a critical theory lens. Social movement theory then in turn offers a tool through which researchers can look to break the hermeneutic circle by examining good practices in volunteer tourism, particularly concerning potential improvements for all stakeholders in self-efficacy, resource networks, and consciousness-raising experiences. The paper culminates with a proposition model based on these theoretical perspectives.